Jennifer Hudson begins her comeback today with the premiere of her first single from her sophomore album with “Where You At.” The initial preview snippet did not give the song justice since there is much more to be heard from the song that sort of left me shrugging.

The R. Kelly-produced has every aspect of a hit R&B ballad. With a soldier drumming beat over a piano accompaniment, Jennifer tells a story of a lover who ultimately let her down. The second verse is particularly interesting with some cool harmonies done by Jennifer and some weirdo outer space sound in the background which at first sounds like some gospel sopranos (which is just bad production technique).

The song leads up to the climax in the bridge and goes into a very played out key change which sees a break then Jennifer belting “Tell me whereeeee…(key change)…you at?!” which didn’t really do much except make for very typical, very “epic ballad” type of ending. It worked though mostly, just seemed very contrived on the song’s part.

Regardless, this song is sounding like its going to be the new hit R&B ballad and definitely has potential to cross over to pop radio after I’m sure urban radio is going to love it up. I am hoping for more interesting and better material from the rest of the album, but this is a safe and appropriate choice to mark Jennifer’s return to the music scene so I’ll take it for now. Take a listen to the song below and then look above (if you didn’t already) to see an amazing picture of the new 80-pound lighter J-Hud.